The Real Inspector Hound, by Tom Stoppard

The Real Inspector Hound opens with a pair of theatre critics, Moon and Birdboot, awaiting the start of a Christiesque murder mystery they have come to critique. As the play-within-a-play progresses, first one and then other of the critics is drawn inexorably into the action, blending their own stories with that of the play.

The Real Inspector Hound

Stoppard has a genius for combining humor with really thought-provoking philosophical questions, and he pulls off both with style in The Real Inspector Hound. I’m going to avoid the pretentiousness of the two theatre critic characters, Moon and Birdboot, and simply say that I laughed throughout the entire reading* at Stoppard’s hysterically melodramatic parody of Agatha Christie–style mysteries, as well as at his slyly satirical ridiculing of highbrow theatre (and literary) criticism. But the play also left me pondering the ways in which theatre and life are both real and unreal, the nature of the lies we tell and the characters we play, and the ways in which our perception of reality is influenced by our position and role (particularly whether we are part of the action or merely observing it.)

I loved it.

*******

*I’m in a small playreading group that includes several college friends; we started during the pandemic lockdowns and kept going on an irregular basis. We gather online to read plays aloud together, with however many of us can participate on a given date. It has been a wonderful way to experience plays I haven’t read before, as well as a fun opportunity to undertake roles in favorite plays that I never had a chance to portray onstage.

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